AKA:
Healers and the need for people to stop whining that they are expanding beyond their role of heal-slaves. (Something that obviously wouldn't fit into the topic title)
This isn't anything official, this is just me blabbing about my experiences with seeing how people treat healers.
This is an issue that exists in tabletop RPGs and MMOs of the previous years, and has been steadily going away. This is a good thing, as it means that developers are starting to realize that people have been shying away from healer classes for a reason.
The problem is that many players have yet to catch up to this fact.
First of all, what is a healer? That depends on who you ask. Some people think that a healer is someone who is dedicated to healing the party. The definition I am working with is a healer is a class with a consistent ability to heal others, though they may be able to do more. Generally speaking, while a paladin can heal, they cannot do so consistently. A cleric would be more consistent.
In general, healer classes tend to fit into two categories. The ones that focus exclusively on healing, and the ones that hybridize healing with damage. (Players who build healers as pure damage tend to be forgetting the whole point of the class).
There are several problems with pure healers, though. First of all, while healing can be a rewarding experience in a party, there's the kicker. In a party. Unless your MMO supports competent hirelings, the healer class is going to be the one that will have the hardest time leveling. You see, at low levels, any braindead warrior can pick up a sword and go cleave something without any healing. The smarter mages and archers will be able to easily take care of monsters before they can even get close. The "pure healing" class, however, is stuck. They have to rely on physical attacks, but they generally have a very weak physical attack. The only way they can solo is to whittle an enemy down while outliving them. This also means resting a lot between long battles because your resources tend to get used up while outliving your enemy.
They should party, you say? With who? Everyone else can solo. The healer needs a party to grind, but no one's interested at those low levels.
Of course, therein lies the problem. At higher levels, parties need healers. But healers need to get to high levels to be of use to those parties. So either the healer needs to make some friends dedicated to leveling them up, or the healers have to put five times the effort into achieving the same results as everyone else.
This is where the idea of "hybrid" healers comes in. Healers that can deal significant amounts of damage. The general expectation, of course, is that they end up sacrificing some of their healing ability to do so, and that their damage prowess, while improved, is still generally one of the weaker damage options. Generally, MMOs that allow this also allow builds, so that you can be a pure healer if you want (such as changing your build at end game when you don't need to grind anymore) or a hybrid healer to help the party with damage as well as healing. I can name several MMOs that accomplish these.
The problem, though, is that most dumb warriors and selfish mages don't want a hybrid healer. They want to be the stars. They're the damage dealers and the tanks. The healer's job, to them, is solely to make sure they keep going. So whenever they see any healer who uses the damage abilities provided to them by the game, the first words they utter are
"Reroll."
"Delete that healer and reroll, no one wants a healer who deals damage."
"OMG you gimped your healing."
There's also the general attitude. Healers are expected to be the nanny of the party. If a party member dies, even if it's because they went after a stray monster and got ambushed to death from too far away, it's the healer's fault. If a party wipes, it's the healer's fault. If a tank gets killed in two seconds because he had paper for armor, it's the healer's fault.
This attitude has actually led several healers of the modern age to actually avoid playing in parties and instead play alone. Because with their increased damage potential, they are actually able to do so.
There is a bit of a backlash against game companies when it comes to allowing healers to deal damage. In the case of Lord of the Rings Online, where the Minstrel can now actually deal significant damage while in a party, the fans tend to complain that the game is "homogenizing the classes."
These are the same people who insist that MMORPGs should not try to balance classes, because "the only way to balance classes is to make them all identical", which is one of the biggest bits of bullshit I have ever heard. (For reference, I have seen this used to defend Wizards being overpowered as fuck in Dungeons and Dragons Online, and that melee characters shouldn't be buffed because "they knew what they were getting into when they rolled a fighter instead of a wizard.")
And that's my rant. Hope ya enjoyed it.